Ryan was kissing Danica outside in a hazy alley. The haze was too thick for Ryan to recognize any nearby buildings. If he were in a mind to think about these things, he would have thought they were by the Dunder Mifflin office complex, except it was night and Ryan could not fathom why anyone would choose Dunder Mifflin as a setting for a makeout.

As it was, he focused on Danica. Her pale skin felt cool to his touch. His fingertips brushed against the back of her neck, which was smooth except for a small ridged scar. Danica cupped his hand in hers and led it away from the scar. They never broke the kiss.

Kelly's crying seeped in the background. Ryan tried to ignore it. The intensity of Danica's kisses waned. Ryan's too; he could not recapture the mood. His pulse slowed, and the world around him filtered in.

The cries turned into screams.

Danica disappeared. Ryan was compelled to follow, as Kelly's screams had grown louder and more desperate. He knew Kelly's penchance for melodrama, but this felt entirely different from the tricks she pulled in the past. Something might really be wrong.

He saw Kelly pinned against a pale man. The man's red eyes gleamed as he fixed his mouth to Kelly's neck.

Then he shattered.

Kelly fell to the ground.

Danica reappeared, leaning over her.

"Promise you won't freak out?" Danica said. It took Ryan a moment to realize she was speaking to him.

She lowered her head to Kelly's shoulder, over the glassy wound the red-eyed man left on her neck. Her eyes blackened . . .

Ryan opened his eyes. His bedroom came into focus slowly; for a minute longer, he was still anchored to the dark street in his dream. Sunlight streamed in through the windows, down onto the bed where he and Kelly lay.

"Are you okay?" Kelly chirped, turning over onto her side to face him. She lightly massaged his arm.

"Sure," he answered through shallow breaths. His lungs ached, as if they had compressed all the air out of him. Air did not seem so necessary a few minutes ago. He repeated, "Sure."

"You were really thrashing around. Were you having another nightmare?"

The fact that she knew he had had other dreams like this one disconcerted him. "No," he denied. "Not really." Shrugging Kelly's hand off him, he got up and stumbled to the bathroom.

He caught his reflection in the mirror, and he barely recognized himself. The tan he had worked on all summer had faded and dark blotches lined his eyes. How did he get so blurry and vague? Everything in the dream was outlined so sharply.

"Babe?" Kelly called through the door. "Are you sure you're all right?'

"Yeah." Ryan turned on the faucet, to legitimize the use of the bathroom. A couple of quick splashes of tap water erased the deathly dark circles.

"You're not slitting your wrists or anything, right?"

That snapped him out of the lingering effects of the dream. "For a dream? Are you kidding?"

"Will you come out here so I can see you?"

And make sure he wasn't bleeding to death, Ryan thought wryly. He was not particularly surprised that she arrived at that conclusion, just because he went into the bathroom without her. Kelly could spin the wildest dramas out of the tiniest things.

He stepped back to the door and flung it open.

Kelly lunged against him, locking him into a tight hug.

"I'm sorry. I was overreacting again," she moaned. "It's just that you get so depressed when you have those dreams."

"They're only dreams, Kelly," Ryan said. With the sun shining brightly and Kelly - his girlfriend - in front of him, he nearly believed it.

He stroked the back of her head. His fingers parted through her long hair and smoothed over the rough scar on her neck. Somehow Kelly's scar had embedded into his dream. Though he had kissed Danica once - or was it twice? - he had never gotten close enough to her to explore his other coworker's neck.

"It's still there," he observed out loud.

He had dwelled on the mystery of the scar for quite some time. Kelly had gotten it recently: she had not had it when they first slept together. But Kelly could not remember what had caused it.

Kelly retreated a couple of steps, cupping her hand over her neck. "I know. It's ugly," she whined. "And I'll probably have it for the rest of my life. And you'll never want to see me, and . . ."

She would go on like this, but Ryan planted another kiss on her lips to silence her.

"You're beautiful," he told her, now that he had a chance to get in a word. "And a microscopic-sized scar would not make me want to stop seeing you."

Kelly nodded teary-eyed. "Oh, Ryan . . ." she gushed.

Fogbound

Ryan drove to work with Kelly.

Kelly had fibbed to her parents about where she was spending the night. She told them that she and her friend Danica were spending the night at another coworker's home. Poor Pam Beesly was all disconsolate after her wedding was called off, and Kelly and Danica were keeping her company.

Ryan knew about the subterfuge, as did Danica, and Pam, and Kelly's sister Laura. Kelly groaned in embarrassment as she remembered when she first formulated the excuse. A twenty-five year old woman, with a successful, full time job, should not need to lie to her parents about where she spent the night. That was almost three months ago.

She and Ryan had one more parting kiss, then she skipped up to the annex. Danica was due back today from another holiday with her foster family, and Kelly wanted to hear everything about it.